We’re pleased and excited to open for registration the new Patagonia Photography Adventure, March 21-31, 2021, with optional extension to Iguazu Falls (March 31 – April 4, 2021). This is a small photography group (6-12 people) with logistics provided by a major travel company, and is for me a dream trip that I am unlikely to repeat.

Refer to the reservation forms for trip cost and payment schedules. Note that a $500 early-bird discount will apply to the first six registrations.

Photo via Wilderness Travel

Patagonia Photography Adventure: Argentina’s Peaks and Glaciers

Some of the most spectacular mountains on our planet are found in Argentina’s Los Glaciare National Park, home to the sky-piercing peaks of the Fitz Roy massif. In collaboration with Wilderness Travel, we have created a photographic adventure that reveals the very best of this grand scale paradise, where rivers of ice pour down from the Southern Patagonian Ice Field.

With options each day, our walks and hikes lead us to stunning photographic locations to capture the spires of Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre. We will visit the park’s magnificent glacier and the massive ice wall of Perito Moreno, one of Argentina’s natural wonders. Back at our comfortable rural estancias, including Helsingfors and Cristina, with their exclusive wilderness locations, we’ll celebrate each amazing day with home-cooked Patagonian fare and fine Argentine wines.

Photo via Wilderness Travel

Optional Iguazu Falls Extension

One of the most stunning natural wonders in the world, Iguazú Falls stretches a full mile across the Rio Parana, with 275 separate cascades—one third on the Brazilian side, two thirds on the Argentinian side—laced with rainbows and plunging hundreds of feet in a mist-shrouded subtropical landscape, truly an other-worldly spectacle. The cascades form part of the Iguazú National Park, known for more than 400 different species of birds. A walk along the footbridges of the park is a chance to spot colorful toucans and other birds. The park was declared a Natural World Heritage for Humanity by UNESCO in 1984. The Falls can be reached by paths, footbridges, and Zodiac, offering a number of different perspectives.

Our spring 2020 destination photo workshop to Southwest France no longer has vacancies. But we do have a couple of other wonderful opportunities, currently with significant early-registration discounts:

Dryad and Dark Angel are in-camera multiple exposures using studio strobes and a black background, with some Photoshop post-production work. With Dryad (above), the model used the multiple exposures to intentionally form a tree-like shape. Later, in Photoshop, I added the exterior textures of branches of a tree to give the sense that the model was an exemplar of the divine spirit in a tree, or in other words, a Tree Goddess, a Dryad.

With Dark Angel (below), the wing-like effect around the model’s upper arms was creating when she moved a black, translucent fabric while making the exposures. I positioned her in the frame you can see in Photoshop.

The replay of my Creative Black and White Opportunities webinar is now available for viewing on YouTube. I had a bit of problem with managing the software, and got “out of the gate” a little slowly, but if you have patience with the webinar I think you’ll find some worthwhile ideas about creative monochrome.

This webinar was organized and sponsored by Rocky Nook, the publishers of my new book Creative Black & White, 2nd Edition. In this webinar, I discussed the monochrome vision, and tips and tricks related to digital black and white photography, and included material on LAB inversions, solarization techniques, the Karl Blossfeldt effect, and x-ray imaging.

My new book, Creative Black & White, 2nd Edition, is now available. The publisher, Rocky Nook, is offering a 40% discount. Click here to buy Creative Black & White 2nd Ed directly from the publisher. Use the code “HDAVIS40” [no quotes] at checkout to apply the discount (you can also use my discount code for all other Rocky Nook books, by the way!).

Regarding my LinkedIn Learning Photoshop Backgrounds & Textures course, a correspondent emails: “Thank you for making this topic so interesting. I’ve been accumulating photos of backgrounds and textures for years and have had very little success with using them in my composites. I now understand how they need to be tweaked with opacity and blending modes to get the effects I like….I think you are tops.”

Looking at our sets of kitchen measuring spoons, with their patina and scratches from long use in a hard-working family kitchen, I noticed the pattern of concentric ovals, particularly when each set of spoons was positioned so that light hit the upper edge of each spoon, and was withheld from the concave interiors.

To control the light, and the reflections in the spoon interiors, we lined a large bucket with black velvet, creating a raised stage within the bucket, also on black velvet. This way I was able to control the light coming in across the measuring spoon sets.

For both images I used a 100mm macro lens tripod mounted at f/22 and ISO 64. Each image is combined from eight exposures, with shutter speeds ranging from 1/4 of a second to 30 seconds.

Podcast Description: Artist, photographer, and writer Harold Davis joins us to discuss his new book Creative Black & White, 2nd Edition, and we talk about the photographer as artist, and how to see the world in monochrome.

My book, Creative Black & White, 2nd Edition, is now available. The publisher, Rocky Nook, is offering a 40% discount. Click here to buy Creative Black & White 2nd Ed directly from the publisher. Use the code “HDAVIS40” [no quotes] at checkout to apply the discount (you can also use my discount code for all other Rocky Nook books, by the way!).

In the morning, Phyllis called me over. She had the vitamin bottle upended, looking inside for pills she noticed them on the circumference of the circle at the bottom spread out almost like a sparkling kaleidoscope.

To photograph the effect, Phyllis held the bottle up in the morning sun in our kitchen. I tripod mounted my camera, and used my macro probe lens, with the front optic pushed inside the vitamin bottle like an eyeball on a stalk.

There’s magic in everyday things! I’ve had guesses about what this photograph depicts ranging from the Eye of Sauron (in his cups, towards the bottom of the story) to an operating room light, a package of seeds, and an architectural dome. It’s all in the eye of the beholder. Or is it?

When I inverted the composition so it was on a black background, I got the image shown below. My son Julian told me I should turn it into an animated GIF, so I did (shown at the top of this story), using Photoshop wire-frame animation.

Like a narrow finger, Bailey Island extends into Casco Bay on the Atlantic coast of Maine. It’s connected to the mainland, some thirty miles away, via a narrow bridge of unusual construction to Orr Island, which serves to intermediate between Bailey Island and the outskirts of Brunswick, Maine.

Built in 1928, a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, this “cribstone” bridge is a lattice of granite stones held in place by gravity. The stone slabs, longer than they are wide, are laid horizontally, first lengthwise, and then crosswise, in several layers, so the load-bearing construction of the bridge is essentially woven of stone.

No mortar or cement is used. The granite slabs are heavy enough to withstand the forces of wind and waves, while the open cribbing allows the tide to ebb and flow freely through the bridge supports.

On Bailey Island itself, Giant’s Stair is notable as an impressive rock formation facing eastern Casco Bay. The land around the Giant’s Stair was donated as a park by a Bailey Island sea captain; the area stands as lonely sentinel to the forces of wind, wave, and geology as they are encroached upon by summer homes of Portland folk.

The thing to eat on Bailey Island is, of course, lobster—and the working harbor holds snugly fishing trawlers, lobster-men, and pleasure craft. On the rise behind the harbor, second homes dot the vista, adding a contrast between the processing wharf shown in the lower left of my photo of the Bailey Island Harbor, and the presumably haute bourgeois lifestyle of the summer residents living in the homes on the upper right.

Coming down to a boatyard, I enjoyed photographing abstractions appearing in the hulls of boats out for maintenance. This one looks like a far country itself, with depth and delineation in the lines of the craft.

This spiral structure is what remains when you don’t deadhead a Clematis flower, and leave it on the vine. You can see how the core of the flower has expanded into the spiral, and the petals have dropped away. The view below is from the underneath, or back; the front view, the top of what used to be the flower, is shown here.

Please join me for a free webinar about Black and White creative opportunities. The webinar is scheduled for Tuesday August 29 at 11AM PT, with free registration on a first-come-first-served basis. Click here to register for my webinar, which is sponsored by Rocky Nook, the publishers of my new book.

In this webinar, I will discuss tips and tricks related to digital black and white photography, and will include material on LAB inversions, solarization techniques, the Karl Blossfeldt effect, and x-ray imaging.

My new book, Creative Black & White, 2nd Edition, is now available. The publisher, Rocky Nook, is offering a 40% discount. Click here to buy Creative Black & White 2nd Ed directly from the publisher. Use the code “HDAVIS40” [no quotes] at checkout to apply the discount (you can also use my discount code for all other Rocky Nook books, by the way!).